Nags Head – Town officials announced a two-pronged approach to combat the rapidly exploding coyote problem there.
Sightings have increased and residents have blamed the coyotes for a sudden increase in reports of missing cats, dogs and even spouses.
Sue Phelps, who lives in the Southridge subdivision said she had seen coyotes in the neighborhood and around Jockey’s Ridge, which the neighborhood borders.
Last Friday she said her husband, Tim, was going to walk over to the C-store across the street from the post office to get some cigarettes. He never returned and Phelps suspects coyotes were responsible.
Town Manager Cliff Oddturn said town staff had been researching the problem for weeks when they finally hit upon a solution.
“One of our younger staff was doing some “deep internet” research on the coyote problem, using a website called Wikipedia,” he said.
The staffer found a link there to numerous documentaries where the young staffer found literally hundreds of examples of a one-two punch guaranteed to eliminate coyotes.
After viewing the videos, Oddturn immediately contacted Acme Industries and, with the consent of the Board of Commissioners, offered significant tax breaks if the company opened a store in the location recently vacated by Outer Banks Furniture.
The town manager also arranged for the purchase of 1,000 roadrunners from Texas.
Oddturn continued, “In spite of their poor performance and safety record, the documentaries clearly reveal that coyotes use Acme products exclusively in vain attempts to gain an edge on their favorite prey, roadrunners.”
“In almost every instance we saw where a coyote used an Acme product to catch a roadrunner, the coyote either died or was seriously maimed in the attempt, “he concluded.
Acme spokesperson Wiley Carson was sure the new plan will work.
“We plan to offer our coyote customers a locals discount, easy payment plans, and one BOGO special each week,” he told us.
Carson had even better news for Nags Head residents, “Our products are even more prone to failure in the 21 st century. The products seen by the town staff in those documentaries were made in the U.S. during the 1960’s. Since then we’ve outsourced our manufacturing to China, so quality control went right out the window along with our employees jobs.”
Carson said the first item offered for discount will be a rocket powered unicycle with free goggles.
Oddturn warned Nags Head residents to avoid stopping to look at random piles of birdseed appearing on roadways and warned drivers to “avoid tunnels that appear to enter into the side of a mountain” as these are common tricks used by coyotes to trap roadrunners.
“Locals know we don’t have tunnels or mountains, but our visitors may not be aware of that particular aspect of our geography,” he said.